Compatī

It took a lot of self-convincing to step back through the portal.

God only knew the storm of questions everyone would have, all the stares and pity they’d throw at me like rice in a wedding procession. It helped that they cared, but the last thing I wanted was them knowing what happened. One Princess of Friendship was enough ponies in that circle.

But thankfully that wasn’t the case. I needed space, and they gave it to me. No questions, no awkward glances.

In fact, the first thing I saw when I stepped through was a big smile on Star Swirl’s face. It briefly reminded me of my grandpa on my dad’s side, all of two times I met him.

“Are you ready?” Starlight asked me. She had just finished redoing the chalk circles around Luna’s body. Her lips were slanted in what seemed like a frown trying its best to be a smile.

“Of course,” I said. I doubted I sounded very convincing. Conviction wasn’t really a thing I had in spades at the moment.

“You can always pull yourself out,” Twilight said. She was in the middle of fluffing up the pillow under Luna’s elbow. She wore that “you know you don’t have to do this” look from last night.

“I know,” I said. I wasn’t sure which statement I meant that for, but it didn’t matter. I had to do this. I had to do this.

I took my place beside Luna, on my half of the chalk circle, pillows pushed aside. I preferred lying on the floor. It made for a few sore muscles when waking up, but it lessened the drowning feeling on the way in.

I closed my eyes, and everyone’s hooves shuffled into place around me. Twilight’s magic tinkled somewhere to my left, the magic hit me, and all sound fell away to the rush of nonexistent water.

When my hooves touched pavement, I took that first relieving breath of air. Almost without thinking, I called out, “Luna?”

No answer. Hearing my voice carry her name into the distance sent creepy crawlies up my legs.

This didn’t feel right. Every time I dream dived, Luna was right there beside me. As much as I couldn’t stand being near her, her absence unsettled me.

Come to think of it, I didn’t dream last night when Twilight came over. Luna was inside me, so I had no reason to think she wouldn’t be there when I slept. What happened to her?

The world around me was lit by the glow of what would have been a full moon, if one hung overhead. But the sky was unnervingly empty—not even the passing suggestion of stars up there. Still, the strange, omnipresent light was better than no light at all, so I got going through the dilapidated city streets.

This dream seemed way more filled in than the ones before. Maybe the Nightmare was getting stronger, or I was getting better at dream diving.

I wandered for what felt like hours through the Manehattan-like city. Not a sight or sound of Luna or the Nightmare. It was like this entire dream was wholly and truly empty.

I felt directionless to the point of wondering why I even bothered. That old, gnawing doubt did its thing, whispering to me from the dark corners of my head: this was a lost cause. My time would be better spent enjoying my freedom from the Nightmare. A shake of my head shut it up pretty quick.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to worry about those thoughts coming back anytime soon, as my wanderings paid off in the form of a familiar yet strange sight: the street we ran down while running from the Nightmare. The ground even had scorch marks where we’d deflected its magic. And farther down the street, the same doorway we crashed through. And the shattered atrium window above it.

Had we been in the same dream every time? I had nothing else to go by, so I retraced our steps.

Everything lay eerily quiet, like an unmarked grave. I didn’t notice it before, but the building sat in a terrible state of decay. Combined with the silence, the crumbling ceiling and mildewed carpets gave this place a being-watched aesthetic. I half expected the Nightmare to come bleeding out of the walls.

I… really needed to stop playing horror video games back home.

A few minutes’ trudging found me through the maze of hallways we took last dream dive and through a final doorway, where I came to a sudden stop.

I stood in the back of an auditorium. Row upon row of smashed and overturned stadium chairs sloped toward a shattered stage, whose floorboards reached into the open air of the outside darkness like the jagged teeth of a manticore.

Luna sat center stage, gazing into the distant dark. Her wing twitched, and she looked over her shoulder at me.

Yesterday came back to me all too suddenly—that smile and those turquoise eyes, that unclean, self-loathing feeling. But I was good at masks. Stuff like that made you good at masks.

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked.

“It is not here,” she said after a pause.

“Well, no shit. I’ve been wandering around for like three hours. This place is a ghost town. Where’d it go?” I stepped up onto the stage, but kept my distance—both from her and the ledge. That said, in all honesty, I’d take my chances with the ledge.

She blinked contemplatively. “I do not know for certain. The Nightmare is expanding the dream, as fractured as this one seems. It seeks to evade us within a labyrinth of its own design. It is stronger than us, true, but it still knows its mortality.”

“So then what do we do?”

“We shrink the dream.” She said it so simply, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Okay. Well are you going to tell me how, or are you going to keep sitting there like some sanctimonious know-it-all?”

And it seemed like the first time she actually let my words get to her. About time the bitch owned up to it.

She flicked her ears back against her head, and her eyes settled somewhere on the floorboards between us. “Your words cut deep, Sunset. I ask that you please refrain from such insults.”

“You don’t get that privilege,” I snapped at her. “Where are we going and what are we doing?”

She brought her eyes up to me, and I saw in them a far-off, contemplative look, her body present but her mind elsewhere. I wasn’t sure what she was thinking about, but she needed to stop. The longer she sat like that, the more uncomfortable it made me feel about all sorts of things.

She blinked, and it was like she remembered she existed at all. Another flit of her left wing, and looked aside.

“Firstly,” she said, “it is important to remember that this is my dream. ’Twas constructed by my subconscious whilst I dreamt, and it is maintained due to the fact that I have not awoken, thanks to the magics you used to supplant me with the Tantabus.”

“Hey, I told you, I only had so much time to make a choice.”

“I am not passing judgement, Sunset, merely reiterating so that I may better explain what lies ahead.”

Hmph. Not passing judgement my ass. Her brand of passive aggression really was a league of its own, and by god I couldn’t stand how it got to me.

“But now that I have been torn from my own body and the dream contained within,” Luna said, “the Nightmare now holds dominion, and it seems to have come to possess rudimentary control of it. However, it has fed off you for so long, yours are the ideas and machinations awaiting us in this fractured plane. There are many things I remember from… those days.”

Her gaze sloughed off me and found itself somewhere in the dust and scattered concrete between us. She blinked, and just as quickly shied away. She didn’t say anything else, so I circled back on something she said.

“What do you mean by ‘fractured’?”

“Fractured. I mean it in a literal sense.” She extended a wing into the distance. “You cannot see it, but beyond the darkness, this dream is not whole. The ground rises, shifts, and separates like tectonic plates unbound from the earth.

“Dreams are not meant to be experienced more than once, nor by multiple ponies. Recurring dreams exist, but they are not explicitly the same dream every time. The insertion and removal of any one subconsciousness exerts heavy stress upon a pre-existing dream, and as such can violently change the landscape. ’Tis why I often choose to end dreams after intervening in them. Not even I may pass through the Veil without leaving a mark.

“Coincidentally,” she continued, “after trading the Tantabus, this is why you entered the dream in full each time thereafter. There was no Veil for you to peel back, because you had already done so. I apologize that I could not properly explain that earlier when you asked.”

Fair enough. I had actually forgotten I asked that question myself. But more importantly: “So then the more I dream dive, the harder it’ll be to find the Tantabus.”

“Quite so. To the point that this dream may collapse on itself, and the Tantabus and Nightmare be flung into the Dreamscape.” Her face darkened. “And if that happens, I fear I do not know what untold catastrophes would follow.”

Twilight had told me about their first go with the Tantabus. I didn’t need convincing that this would be way worse.

“Okay, so not only do we have a time limit on stopping this thing, but we also only have so many reset buttons. Great. So back to the whole shrinking-the-dream thing…”

“Yes. From what I can make of it, the Nightmare has been reconstructing segments of your past as a means of deterrence, much like yesterday’s…”

“Yesterday’s what?” I spat.

She was trying to find the right word for it, but I knew exactly what ran through her head. Yesterday’s incident. Yesterday’s oopsy daisy. Just say it, you stupid bitch.

“Trial,” she finished. Again, she let her gaze fall to the floor, and her wings slacked beneath the curve of her back. “Symbolism and syllogism withstanding, I believe that were you to confront these past demons, it would weaken the foundations upon which the Nightmare builds this dream, and those aspects would slough into the Eversleep below.”

“The Eversleep?” I asked.

“For one as to-the-point as yourself, you certainly enjoy your tangents.”

“Hey, you’re the one being all cryptic about it,” I said. Was she really getting snippy with me over this? “So what the hell is this ‘Eversleep’?”

“It is… I am not quite sure what it is. It is the remains of dreams as they fall apart and become one with the universe’s collective subconscious.”

“So it’s like flushing a dream down the toilet.”

She blinked. It looked like she had to physically will herself not to snap at me for that. The muscles in her legs tensed and relaxed.

“I suppose one could draw similarities,” she said coldly. “At the very least, if I am wrong, it will help us navigate those elements of the dream with more certainty.”

“Whatever,” I said.

She furrowed her brow. “This callous indifference of yours is not helping, Sunset, and it does little to mask your fears.”

“I’m not afraid of anything,” I spat.

She didn’t even crack a smile. “The deeper down you push your fears, the blacker they become.”

“I told you, I’m not afraid!”

I took a deep breath and settled myself. She wouldn’t get to me. Whatever the hell game she was trying to play, I wouldn’t let her win.

“I don’t know what you think I’m afraid of,” I said, “but you’re wrong. Let’s just get this over with. What do you need me to do?”

She stared at me for way longer than I was comfortable with. It was an almost pitying look. I had half a mind to knock it loose from her face, along with maybe a tooth or five.

“You must confront the regrets you hold closest to your heart,” she said.

“And those are?”

“That is for you to say, Sunset. There—”

“That isn’t an answer,” I spat. I was tired of this game. I didn’t need her dancing around the subject like some kind of holier-than-thou matador.

“I was not finished,” she said with a pointed stare before lapsing back into that look of… dejection? Seriously, fuck her. “There are many things that I convinced you to do. Terrible things. And their weight shall forever rest upon my shoulders, not yours. But I cannot tell you what they are, only that they exist. That knowledge lies with you. Follow your heart, Sunset. It will never steer you wrong.”

I felt the muscles in my legs tighten. My heart told me to punch her in the face. Would she have found that wrong?

“Great. So then are we doing anything else in this dream right now, or am I waking up and doing that?”

“I am here for you should you desire additional counsel, but in the essence of time, I believe you should set off.”

Fucking hell, she knew how to get under my skin. Waste my time and belittle me all in one go. She wasn’t doing herself any favors. Or maybe she just liked pissing me off.

Whatever. We were done talking. I had to count my blessings where they mattered most.

“Fine,” I said and cast the Wake-Up Spell.

The all-too-familiar magic lifted me off the ground by my shoulders, like I had grown a pair of invisible wings, and I tilted backward. A cold sensation, like passing through a paper-thin wall of water, washed over me, back to front, and gravity shifted somewhere in the meanwhile. It got really bright all of a sudden, and I had to squint to keep it from hurting.

“You’re awake already?”

That sounded like Starlight. Yeah, that was Starlight, overtop of me with a glass of water like always.

“Is everything okay?” Twilight asked.

“Well, she didn’t wake up screaming and shooting up the place,” Starlight said, “so I’d like to think she’s okay.”

After a long pull from the glass of water, I shook my head and rubbed away a migraine. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Twilight stepped up beside me and put a hoof on my shoulder. “What’s going on, then? Did we forget something?”

I sat in silence for a moment, simply appreciating the weight of her hoof on my shoulder, the realness of reality asserting itself around me. I was still coming to, but even in that groggy state, I couldn’t help needing that closeness. It spoke multitudes to me, that sensation.

But with more of me coming to, so did everything Luna said. She knew a hell of a lot more about dreams than I did. No matter how much I hated her guts, I couldn’t ignore that.

“She and I talked. I have some stuff I gotta take care of.”

Twilight looked at me funny, but that was neither here nor there. If I was going to get my part of this job done, I couldn’t let my bullshit emotions get in the way.

I got up and got going.

• • •

Luna might have been coy about saying it, but I had no reason to be. She wanted me to talk to all the ponies whose lives I’d destroyed.

Might as well start from the top. Get the worst one over with first.

Some Royal Guard I didn’t know was stationed outside Celestia’s door. He gave me a wary glance when I approached, the wing holding his spear tightening around the shaft as if ready for me to start something.

I offered him a smile, if only so he wouldn’t stab me when I got close.

“I’m here to see Princess Celestia,” I said.

“Any and all appointments with the princess are to be processed through—”

“Yeah, yeah, through the Advisory Board, I know. It’s tea time right now, though. She has 30 minutes to spare. Tell her it’s Sunset Shimmer. Please,” I added, when all he did was glare.

Without taking his eyes off me, he leaned toward the door and knocked with a vicious-looking metal barb attached to his wingtip, specifically so that I knew it was there. The guy really didn’t trust me.

“Your Highness,” he said in a gruff, soldier-like fashion.

“Yes, Razorwing?” came Celestia’s voice through the door.

“A mare named Sunset Shimmer is here to see you.”

A pause. “Send her in, please.”

He looked surprised. At least, as much surprise as could peek through that trained indifference of his. Nonetheless, he opened the door at her command and gestured me in.

Up went my eyes to the chandelier and the spray of rainbows along the ceiling and its winding ivy-like plastering. It was a strangely uncomfortable nostalgia, following it with my eyes.

Celestia sat at her tea table in the middle of the room, books and tasseled bookmarks and little notes plastered all over. She had a little section quartered off for her tea, but at least a half-dozen legal documents heedlessly encroached on that holy ground.

She was really in the thick of it. Maybe this specific tea time wasn’t the best one to interrupt. Celestia made no show of such an intrusion, though, greeting me with a sweeping smile.

“Good afternoon, Sunset,” she said in that all-too-memorable voice. Just listening to it wash over me sent goosebumps up my legs.

I sat down like I had so many times as her student. God, this was weird.

“Hey,” I said, as formal as ever.

She set aside the book she’d been poring over and pulled her teapot and an extra cup from the secretary against the left wall.

“Tea?” she asked. She made a placemat’s worth of space for me on my end, the documents and manila folders shuffled and stacked aside.

“Sure.” Might as well. Everything else already felt eerily déjà vu-y enough. Hot water, chamomile, some honey, and a little stirring spoon. Back to silence.

“So,” she said. “You wish to speak to me?”

She maintained an air of friendliness to her voice, but not the same kind I used to know. The distant kind of friendliness, a guarded politeness normally reserved for someone she’d only met once or twice. Definitely not the kind I would have expected from the mare I once looked up to as more of a mom than my own mother.

“Luna says hi,” I said.

She hadn’t, but I was at a loss for conversation starters. Best let decorum lead the charge, and the smile on Celestia’s face said that hit home better than any other dogshit icebreaker I could have come up with.

“I’m glad to hear it. And how is your progress with the Tantabus?”

“We’re working on it,” I said. “Bit of a bumpy road, but we’re getting through.”

Celestia took the momentary silence to refill her teacup. The sound of it pouring into her cup was one I never thought I’d miss.

I scratched my head. “That’s… actually why I’m here.”

The pouring stopped, and Celestia looked at me—like, actually looked at me. It was as if, maybe, she forgot all the crap that happened between us, just for a moment. She set everything aside.

“I am more than happy to help in any way that I can,” she said. The old warmth in her voice was back. Same with her smile.

“Yeah, I… that’s the hard part. You see, Luna thinks that the Nightmare is feeding off my regrets, specifically the things she made me do uh… back then.” I tapped the tips of my hooves together. “And that includes everything I did to you.”

“You never wronged me, Sunset. Not once.”

Except I did. I bit my tongue, though. I wanted to keep this as civil as possible.

“You say that,” I said. “But you’re not the one who fell for an evil ghost pony that turned you against everyone you loved.”

Celestia let that sit between us for a bit. She of all ponies could tell a sore subject when she saw one. Not that I hadn’t tried murdering her over it or anything.

I sampled the tea to fill in the time. Seven years had done nothing to change the taste, but drinking it used to make her happy. Now that I was older, I wondered if she’d always seen right through that little nicety.

“You said that Luna sent you? Or I should say, you came to see me because of a suggestion she made?”

I flicked my ears back. “Y-yeah, but that doesn't make what I have to say any less sincere. I'm sorry for what I did. I really, truly am. I'm sorry for not following through on the friendship lessons you taught me, for not listening when you clearly knew better than I did. I'm sorry for not being worth your time as a student.”

She flicked an ear at that. The years I'd spent under her tutelage gave me the wherewithal to recognize that little twitch of frustration when I saw it. Did she seriously think I wasn't being sincere? Or was this one of those multi-layered implications that I hadn't picked up on yet?

“You should listen to her,” Celestia said, keeping to herself whatever little speedbump I had plowed through. “Luna, that is. I understand you have… misgivings about my sister, and for your own justified and rightful reasons. But Luna is wiser than even she gives herself credit for, and she is no less experienced in dreams.”

That last bit got a twitch out of me. “Yeah…” I said curtly.

I’d gotten the impression Luna had more than a few brain cells to rub together from my time dream diving, and I’d be an idiot to think she wasn’t smart, the way she played me like a fiddle back then. I just… I just couldn’t shake the sense of dread in listening to her. It felt wrong on so many levels to trust her, even with the most innocuous stuff.

“But as much as I trust her wisdom on… a way forward, as it were,” Celestia said, “I disagree with the notion of you asking me for forgiveness. Rather, I should be the one asking you, Sunset. I wasn’t the mentor you deserved, and I was too quick to punish you on her account. I was afraid if I didn’t act immediately, things would have gotten far worse.”

And there she went trying to turn everything around on me. Again with the porcelain doll mentality everyone obsessed over: I did nothing wrong; how could somebody so fucking fragile ever do anything wrong?

“Please don’t apologize,” I said. “You’re not the one who’s supposed to be apologizing.”

“Except I am. Luna only became Nightmare Moon because I failed to be the sister she needed. Had I been that sister, there would be no Nightmare Moon, and she would never have hurt you. Nevertheless, instead of keeping you safe from her, I dismissed you, and I…” She looked askance, and her ears followed suit. It got a strangely uncomfortable sensation squirming in my chest.

Not once in my life had I ever seen Celestia trail off. Every word, every sentence, she spoke with an almost deific conviction. In light of that, what I would consider here a minor moment of guilt for anyone else was for her a moment of complete and utter shattering. But just as quick, a thousand years of practice did its job. Up went the mask, and the princess was again whole and perfect as she should be.

“Water flows downhill, Sunset, and it carries with it whatever sand or silt it picks up along the way.”

I let the totality of her sentiment roll around in my head for a good minute, but every little thread my brain could follow brought me to the same conclusion. “You can’t hold yourself accountable for what she did to me because of what you did a thousand years ago. That’s stupid and insane.”

“By that same logic, neither should you, Sunset. I could not control Luna’s actions, but I had every opportunity to control how I reacted to them, and I failed to do so in a way that mattered.” She leaned forward the slightest bit in her chair, and in her eyes I saw genuine sorrow. “And for that, Sunset, I am sorry.”

That got me flattening back my ears and setting my jaw. I listened to her words bounce around in my skull like a bullet ricocheting infinitely, unable to find a way out.

She was sorry. She was sorry. She was sorry. Celestia was sorry. But she had no reason to be sorry, because being sorry implied she had done something wrong or that I had done something wrong worth forgiving, something capable of being forgiven and what the fuck was wrong with me and every little notion of innocence that had built this mountain between us and she was sorr—

Breathe.

Breathe. Breathe despite the trembles. Breathe through the tightness.

In through the nose, out through the mouth. Look at the tea set. The little tea packets in the silver plate container and the little fleurs-de-lis along the rim. Its tiny claw-feet, like those on a fancy bathtub. The manila folders, the spotlessness of Celestia’s table, the fine china and the slight discoloration of the liquid in the cup before me. The tea. Think of the tea and how it always tasted like ass and how the honey never did anything for it and she was sorr—

No. Don't think that. Don't fucking think that. Stop your stupid fucking brain right there and just don't. Watch the balcony curtains blow in with the wind. Watch them breathe. Breathe like they do. In and out. Keep the rhythm. It was nice out. It was nice out. Breathe, and let reality be.

I let out that final breath, and I liked to think that I had it under control again. Hopefully.

Maybe.

“Sunset,” Celestia said.

I flinched, but managed to point my ears forward and look her in the eye. Again, that same genuine sorrow gazed back at me, and it was the worst goddamn thing.

“I know you feel responsible for what you did,” she said. “But it's important to understand that what she manipulated you into doing isn’t your fault,” she said.

Maybe not.

“Don’t say that.” I pulled my hooves off the table. “Please.”

“Sunset, what she did to you is not—”

I slammed my hooves on the table and leaned forward. I felt like I was drowning and didn’t know which way was up. The only thing that kept me from keeling over was my balance on the table, and even that was slipping.

“It’s not my fault,” I said. “You keep saying that. Everyone keeps saying that. But you know what? You’re all wrong. Every last one of you.

“I didn’t ask her to do what she did to me, but it is my fault. I’m the one who let her in and let myself become the satanic bitch that I did. I’m the one who let her twist the lessons you taught me and the friendships you encouraged me to make.

“I’m the one who spit in your face when you tried to talk some sense into me,” I said, placing my hoof over my heart. “And didn’t believe a goddamn word you said. I still did every last bit of it of my own volition, and I… I already had this conversation with Twilight…” I sighed and cradled my head in my hooves. “I really don’t want to have it again.”

She wanted to say it again—that godforsaken phrase: it’s not your fault. But she spared me another go of that broken record everyone loved playing so damn much.

“I just…” I took a deep breath. “I want to get this over with, so I never have to think about it again.”

Celestia wore a slew of emotions, like she couldn’t pick which one fit best. “I understand wanting to put this all behind you, Sunset, but regrets aren’t something you simply ‘get over.’ That’s why they’re regrets. You don’t leave them behind. You come to terms with them.”

“Well then that’s what I need to do, so just…” I folded back my ears and looked away. “Please.”

I let my eyes wander back to the balcony and its fluttering curtains. I’d always had it in my head that the sun’s brightness directly correlated with Celestia’s mood. Following that logic, gloomy days never sat well with me, more so during moments like this when a cloudless sky seemed just a tad darker.

“Coming to terms with your regrets takes time, Sunset. You can’t force it. Different things take longer than others, and it’s different for every pony going through them.”

“It’s been seven years.”

She had raised her teacup to her lips but stopped short as I said those words. It held her attention for an uncomfortably long second.

“It’s been a thousand,” she said.

That got a scowl out of me. If she was trying to make me feel bad for her, or say that my problems were insignificant by comparison, then that was a low blow. I didn’t care how long she’d dealt with her problems compared to mine, they were apples and oranges.

She must have read that sentiment all over my face, though, as she set her teacup down without taking that sip. “I don't mean that as a comparison, Sunset. Merely that regrets take time. Sometimes a very long time.”

I glared at her a second longer before letting the anger of the moment slough from me like mud in a hot shower. My hooves followed suit, back to the pillow beneath me, and I punctuated the sentiment with a sigh that I really wished did more to tamp down the frustration roiling in my chest.

“Luna has a lot of regrets, too,” Celestia said, after I didn’t respond.

“She fucking better,” I spat. That earned me a good five seconds of silence.

“Do you know how she came to terms with them?”

I rolled my eyes. “The Tantabus. I know. Twilight told me the story. Luna created the Tantabus and bottled up her regrets until it almost caused it to escape into the real world and turn it into a living nightmare.”

“That is all true, but it doesn’t answer my question.” She used that forever patient tone of voice I remembered from her many court holdings. “Do you know how she came to terms with them?”

Silence. I had no answer for her. Younger me would have trembled at the very thought of not knowing. Younger me had to be perfect for her, lived and breathed by her every word. Present me just wanted to go home. This whole “fix my regrets” thing was a joke. I’d rather just dive back in and fight this thing to the death than deal with another minute of this wayward therapy session.

“She forgave herself,” Celestia said simply.

I blinked and cocked my head. Maybe I didn’t hear her right.

“What?” I asked.

“She forgave herself.”

No, I did hear her right. But she couldn’t have possibly said that. Nobody in this world or the other would let that kind of shit slide.

“That’s it?” I stood up and practically leaned over the table. “That’s fucking it? She forgave herself? Whoop-de-fucking-do!”

“Sunset—”

“No. Don’t you fucking shield her like this isn’t all because of her.” My legs trembled. I leaned into the table hard enough that it slid toward her with a very unruly scrape on the marble floor.

Celestia lowered her nose, but didn’t take her eyes from me. She was done making excuses, and about goddamn time. I wasn’t going to listen to her spew any more shit about Luna. She sat there and took it like she damn well deserved.

“I haven’t slept right in seven years,” I said. “And don’t give me anything about your thousand. Do you have any idea what she did to me? What she actually… You know what? No. I already know the answer to that, because if you did, you wouldn't be spewing this bullshit.”

I ground the edge of my hooves into the glass of her coffee table, and the lack of hands I could ball into fists left me desperately flailing for a means of channeling all this pent up whatever-the-fuck I was feeling. I gritted my teeth and shook my head.

I wasn't gonna cry. Not now. Not now not now not now.

“I’m not doing this,” I shakily forced out. “If this is how you’re gonna be, then I don’t want to fix what’s between us. I’ll take care of this mess without your help. Fuck this, and fuck you.”

I got up and stormed for the door, but just as I threw my magic around it:

“Sunset…”

Celestia’s voice carried so softly. No matter how much I hated her guts, that ancient need to appease her crawled out from whatever hole in my heart it’d been hiding in and rooted me in place.

I shut my eyes. Not now. Please… Anytime but now.

“Would you please go see him?” she said. “Not for my sake. He misses you.”

I squeezed my eyes shut tighter. Why now?

I used the momentary silence to steady my breathing. “Fine.”

I pushed the door open and headed out.